: Pay me a sovereign, and I'll
make you a member of an association that supplies fashionable clothing
at about half the ordinary price,--wouldn't you jump at it?'

'If I thought it wasn't a swindle,' Fanny replied ingenuously.

'Of course. But you'd be made to see it wasn't. And suppose they went on
to say: Take a ten-pound share, and you shall have a big interest on it,
as well as your dresses for next to nothing. How would you like that?'

'Can it be done?'

'I've got a notion it can, and I think I know two or three people who
would help to set the thing going. But we must have some capital to
show. Have you the pluck to join in?'

'And suppose I lose my money?'

'I'll guarantee you the same income you're getting now--if that will
satisfy you. I've been looking round, and making inquiries, and I've got
to know a bit about the profits of big dressmakers. We should start in
Camberwell, or somewhere about there, and fish in all the women who want
to do the heavy on very little. There are thousands and thousands of
them, and most of them'--she lowered her voice--'know as much about cut
and material as they do about stockbroking. Do you twig? People like
Mrs. Middlemist and Mrs. Murch. They spend, most likely, thirty or forty
pounds a year on their things, and we could dress them a good deal more
smartly for half the money. Of course we should make out that a dress we
sold them for five guineas was worth ten in the shops, and the real cost
would be two. See? The thing is to persuade them that they're getting an
article cheap, and at the same time making money out of other people.'

Thus, and at much greater length, did Miss. French discourse to her
attentive sister. Forgetful of the time, Fanny found at length that it
would be impossible to meet Horace Lord as he came out of church; but it
did not distress her.

CHAPTER 3

Nancy Lord stood at the front-room window, a hand grasping each side of
her waist, her look vaguely directed upon the limetree opposite and the
house which it in part concealed. She was a well-grown girl of three
and twenty, with the complexion and the mould of form which indicate,
whatever else, habitual nourishment on good and plenteous food. In her
ripe lips and softly-rounded cheeks the current of life ran warm. She had
hair of a fine auburn, and her mode of wearing it, in a plaited diadem,
answered the purpose of completing a figure which, without being tall,
had some stateliness a